Re: [GD-Design] Off-line vs. on-line play and cheating

[Alain H. <ah...@re...>]

Wow. Attempting to make an always on line game cheat free is already VERY
hard. Well, of course it's impossible, but always on line games can make
things very unpleasant for the hackers.

However you are attempting to solve a much harder problem: off line games.
Off line games have the same problem that DRM (Digital Rights Management)
developers face: a lack of trust. Without any seed of trust there is simply
nothing you can do. Most DRMs attempt to get a kernel of trust started by
employing "tamper resistant code." Normal code (in which a few extra
precautions are taken) is usually converted into "TR" code via a specialized
(usually in house written) compiler.

Once you have a kernel of trust the world is your oyster (at least until
your TR is broken). Your game state (in memory) should be "encrypted" (I use
quotes since due to performance concerns your encryption may not be up to
AES standards). You can use full strength encryption on your save files.

Note that TR usually imposes a very heavy performce penalty. The performance
penalty is almost directly proportional to the security gained.

Note sure what the heck blizzard does. Perhaps they have some other tricks.
I'd love to hear about them!

Oh, and I would change my binaries as frequently as economically feasible.
And make sure that each biniary is different in some fundemental way (eg:
automate the process that changes the structures).

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Hook" <bri...@py...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Monday, July 22, 2002 10:32 AM
Subject: [GD-Design] Off-line vs. on-line play and cheating


> Preface:
>
> Probably the #1 problem people complain about with on-line gaming are
> potential cheats, hacks and exploiters.  As most people know, the only
> way to "prevent" this is to make the server final arbiter on all
> important decisions.
>
> Question:
>
> We're working on a game design that, at its core, is just a vast space
> exploration RPG, but which happens to have the ability to connect with
> other players at a central server so they can interact, trade, adventure
> together, etc.
>
> The thing is, there's nothing inherently multiplayer about the design --
> much of the gameplay could be done by hosting a loopback server on a
> player's system, just like Quake, etc.  The problem, of course, is the
> ability to cheat.  Even more severely is that cheating can affect your
> persistent persona, possibly ruining the game for others if you hack
> your local character descriptio then connect on-line with an overpowered
> character.
>
> So while I intellectually recognize this as a mostly unsolveable
> problem, it bothers me somewhat that the game can't be played "safely"
> as a single player game while at the same time allowing you to interact
> with others when the ability arises.
>
> A classic example is that you want to explore, do some spaceship
> upgrades, and perform other non-social activities.  You can do all this
> sitting on an airplane if necessary, and in theory won't need a net
> connection.  When you do get a chance to login, you "diff" your state
> with the server's state, and then continue on your merry way.
>
> Since the universe is procedurally generated from a pre-determined seed,
> by definition everything your local server generates will be in sync
> with whatever the persistent server generates, so there won't be any
> synchronization issues.  The only problems will be when two players
> compete for the same resource, and one "claims" the resource off-line.
> This is easy enough to solve by simply stating that the first player
> on-line gets to take their claim, e.g. you discover and name a mineral
> rich planet, now you want to log-in to "lock in" your claim.  Other
> issues like this can also be solved the same way.
>
> Instead of chalking this up as impossible because of practical
> constraints having to do with cheating, local files being open to
> countless attacks, etc. I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on the
> problem and possibly a look at it from a different direction.  I'm not
> sure how Battle.net handles it, but I presume that on-line players can't
> bring off-line characters with them.
>
> Brian
>
>
>
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